Era of Old
by Audreidi
Summary: Before the prequels...before the Sith, or even the Jedi...the Order has to start somewhere. The Force is with the first Jedi...but will the Jedi find the Force? R


Very short and somewhat angsty…but it'll get better later, I promise. This was the work of an impulse…you know, "living in the moment" and all that. FYI, it takes place before the Sith era…before the Force was even discovered…but if I continue, I promise you will see the Force at work, if it hasn't already started…

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Era of Old

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"Shalalth!"

The high-pitched cry rang over rocks, through the thin woods, almost to where a man warmed his hands over a struggling fire.

"Shalalth!"

Almost to his ears.

"_Shalalth…"_

He shuddered in the cool breeze, suddenly cold throughout his body, and rubbed his forearms before returning his hands to the beckoning flame.

The wind whipped up to a climax, extinguishing the small fire with a pair of frigidly fluid fingers before it passed on over the hills, stealing his warmth away.

The fangs of winter sank into the landscape.

Shalalth was cold. But the body of his wife was colder still.

***

"Find the sky. Leave for a better place." His numb lips formed the words, driven by simple necessity of tradition.

"Fly amid the heavens," his children responded, as automatically as he did.

All four stared through the pile of heaped granite to where they knew she lay. The wind roared in their ears mockingly, mercilessly. It always took what it could, though it needed nothing more than itself to survive. It even took the warmth away from the hot tears rolling down his cheeks, leaving them to trailing little icicles.

They could not dig through the earth of this place; the ground was frozen year-round.

Shalalth had been planning to leave, to hunt out a warmer climate with his wife and children. They had been preparing for the trip, and then Senesh had slipped, splashing through the ice into the water underneath that refused to freeze.

He had told her to wear her warm boots while she was out. She had laughed and said it was only a short walk.

How that walk must have stretched out for her as she staggered up the rocky bank with frozen feet, fighting the grip.

They fought the grip. Every day, the fight went on. Somedays the grip lost them; somedays, it won. This was one of the latter, and Shalalth could see the loss reflected in his children's eyes.

Jheamei was eldest. If her mother had been a warrior, it was reflected doubly in her. She did not cry out of sorrow; her tears were of the injustice of it all, of death. They were beading drops of burning anger, with a kind of heat the wind could never take away. He knew she would be gone, hunting for at least a day to busy herself.

Rhyalh was Jheamei's twin. He stood half a head higher than she, the same as his father. His mindset was close to his sister's, though Shalalth knew he would be reflecting on his mother's life, rather than the tragedy that lay under the stone. His face, like his thoughts, was chiseled. He picked, he chose; he was the one with exceptional discernment, the gardener.

But Shalalth could never quite tell what Khyren was thinking, could never be sure of what ideas, what pictures were running through his youngest son's mind. What things filled his head? What was the substance of the stories his mother used to tell him?

Khyren had found a flat stone on the shoreline, and now he scratched at it with a harder point, the tip of a small but perfect diamond he kept in his pocket. Where others found stone to be hard, cold, and lifeless, he found a comfort, the essence of life itself. Stone, to Khyren, was more a persona than an inanimate thing, more than a tool.

Now Shalalth appreciated that viewpoint as Khyren set up the stone at the head of the pile of its brethren. They read in silence.

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What is life but a frail embrace

the rocks at sea placed by a mighty hand

there they stand

being eaten away by the pounding waves of circumstance

the relentless washing of harsh occasion

until nothing but brittle spindles remain

and even these become beaten into the sand that now

lines the shore, a soft cushion under man's feet

a protection from the rock underneath them, what

it had once been but will never be able to stand

so tall in unity again without man's ingenuity, and 

the very substance that destroyed it so slowly,

that over a thousand years etched by its terrible signature

into something so proud

that now lines the shore

***

Khyren was not a poet in the truest sense. His artistic instincts had not been refined, had not been directed. But Shalalth felt the rawness was somehow better than a polished jumble of words.

Words were the best way to carry the feeling across, though they did the emotion injustice.

The broken family went on their way the next morning, leaving behind the only thing constant, the one thing to be sure of in life.

Death.

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There might be more, there might be not…depends on how I feel and how many reviews I get…(^^)


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